But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless,
mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble.
Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wandered
farther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom my
friends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in my
trousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its own
waters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes at
the back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his head
on the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well,
and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations of
unoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear.
I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I was
so fond of Buffon's _Natural History_, of which there was an English
abridgment on the dining-room bookshelves.
But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent came
round, and teased my father into taking in the _Penny Cyclopaedia_; and
those numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile were
the numbers for me!
I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the only
way in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, I
don't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame.
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